About Textshine
Textshine is a fully automated proofreading solution for media companies that frees editors from linguistic proofreading and thus releases 5-10% of your editorial resources. This saves you time, reduces costs, makes you faster and creates space for your most important task: creating high-quality journalistic content.
On this page you will find answers to the most frequently asked questions about Textshine. If you have any further questions, simply send an email to me or my colleague Anna Bozecski, we are always happy to help.
Best regards
- What Textshine corrects – and what it doesn't
- How accurate is Textshine?
- What happens with proper names, jargon and colloquial language?
- Where does Textshine reach its limits?
- What about data security?
- Do corrected texts need to be labeled as AI-generated?
- Does Textshine constantly learn?
- Does Textshine replace…?
- How does Textshine differ from ChatGPT?
What Textshine corrects – and what it doesn’t
The correction suggestions you receive from Textshine are created by a complex system that combines multiple (AI) models, rule sets and heuristics to provide you with the best possible correction quality.
âś… What Textshine corrects
Our design principle is: Textshine should only correct what is actually wrong.
This primarily includes spelling, grammar and punctuation.
- Textshine checks your
spelingspelling, theyour grammar,- and – last but not least – punctuation.
When multiple spellings are permissible, we try to follow DUDEN recommendations as much as possible.
Unlike the competition, Textshine is able to consider the semantic context when making corrections. Here’s an example:
- Birch wood is often used in furniture making in various shades as it can be easily dyed.
TheyIt is heavy and medium-hard, andthey areit is particularly tough and elastic.
Furthermore, Textshine tries to harmonize certain spellings (quotation marks, gender-neutral spelling, etc.):
- Some texts use various "quotation marks", including
'single'"double" or even«French»"German". Textshine harmonizes these – depending on which are primarily used in the text. - When using gender-inclusive language, there is often inconsistency. In one place, you might read about teachers, and shortly after suddenly about
student(s)students.
đźš« What Textshine explicitly does not correct
If you’re looking for general writing assistance, then you shouldn’t use Textshine. Because what Textshine explicitly does not do is make stylistic interventions, wording suggestions and similar interferences.
We believe that our customers master writing much better than an AI, if only because the appropriate wording doesn’t follow clear rules but is highly personal and individual.
We also believe that our customers – unlike simple proofreading – want to continue doing this type of work themselves.
This is what a successful symbiosis of human and machine looks like to us.
🎯 How accurate is Textshine?
Textshine is not only the safest but also the most accurate proofreading tool on the market. For rough classification: Textshine is still a little below the level of a professional proofreader, but already far above the level of most non-professional proofreaders.
This assessment is based on countless feedback from customers who have compared Textshine with other market participants and with professional proofreaders.
That Textshine is the most accurate automatic proofreading solution can easily be verified. At the same time, exact quantification is extremely difficult, as the quality of the correction always depends on the complexity of the source text used for measurement:
- Some texts are more difficult than others: A text in simple language with simple typos is easier to correct than a complicated text in scientific jargon with very subtle errors.
- Not every found/overlooked error weighs equally: If a wrong article is overlooked, this error usually weighs more heavily than a comma error that many readers might not even notice.
Thus, primarily the subjective assessment remains whether Textshine meets your requirements. But because we are so convinced of the quality of our product, we have prominently placed an input field on www.textshine.com where you can test Textshine for free and without registration, because that’s our best advertising. So our request: See for yourself!
👩‍⚕️ What happens with proper names, jargon and colloquial language?
Unlike other programs, Textshine is able to correct proper names, jargon and colloquial language like “normal” text. You don’t have to laboriously add these words to a dictionary.
But even a proper name can be misspelled, so if we’re talking about the actress KateCate Blanchett, then Textshine would intervene. However, if a name or term is rather unknown, it won’t be corrected in case of doubt.
đź’© Where does Textshine reach its limits?
Textshine is of course not perfect. We know this, and we don’t want to hide it. Here are the biggest limitations we know of:
- To err is not only human:
- Sometimes Textshine overlooks something. Just as there has never been perfect proofreading, there is no hundred percent error-free result with Textshine either.
- Not every correction suggestion is correct. Therefore, look at the correction suggestions carefully and reject the incorrect ones.
- Consistency of spellings across longer passages: It can happen that Textshine always hyphenates Baltoro-Glacier in one passage, but writes it as Baltoroglacier in another passage.
- Compatibility with Word documents is very comprehensive, but not 100% complete:
- Endnotes are not yet supported. Here you can find instructions on how to convert endnotes to footnotes: support.microsoft.com.
đź”’ What about data security?
The security and integrity of your data is our top priority, for which we were also rewarded with extensive funding as part of the AI Mission Austria of the federal government after strict jury decision.
To protect your data, we have taken the following measures:
- All texts are transmitted encrypted (encryption in transit)
- Your documents are stored encrypted (encryption at rest)
- Only authorized employees based in Austria have access to code and servers.
- We do not train our AI models on your data.
- Your documents are automatically and irrevocably deleted within 24 hours of order placement.
If you would like to learn more about these topics, please read our Privacy Policy and our Terms and Conditions.
🏷️ Do corrected texts need to be labeled as AI-generated?
First: It is essential that you observe the legal and institutional regulations in your specific area of application. We cannot provide binding information here.
But: In our assessment, documents provided with correction suggestions by Textshine should not be subject to labeling requirements, because:
- Textshine does not generate independent texts, but merely provides correction suggestions for existing texts.
- The correction suggestions mainly concern spelling, grammar and punctuation. They do not change the content core or authorship of the original text.
- The final decision on accepting or rejecting the correction suggestions still lies with you as the user.
đź’Ż Does Textshine constantly learn?
Yes and no.
Textshine doesn’t learn “just like that” from the texts you submit for correction. We don’t train our models on your data to protect your copyright, privacy and the confidentiality of your documents.
Nevertheless, we are constantly developing Textshine further:
Through your feedback: With the help of your feedback, especially error cases, we can continuously improve Textshine’s performance.
Thanks to our cooperation partners: We work with partners who provide us with texts for which they themselves hold the copyright. These partners have given us permission to use their texts for training.
Based on our own use of and vision for Textshine: We ourselves come from the publishing industry and have been using Textshine in our daily work for many years. This gives us a clear idea of how Textshine can be expanded in the future and we are continuously working on improving the underlying algorithms and models.
In this way, we can steadily develop Textshine without violating our users’ rights.
🤖 Does Textshine replace…?
Does Textshine replace journalistic proofreading?
In everyday editorial work, Textshine is intended as a supportive proofreading instance. It thus complements your existing expertise to create space for human creativity and editorial care.
For editors, this means that they no longer have to proofread for spelling errors and thus get more time for research and writing again.
For proofreaders, this means that they can focus on more demanding aspects of their work: the content review and stylistic revision that are essential for high-quality publications.
Does Textshine replace conventional proofreading?
Depending on the text and requirements, Textshine can significantly relieve or even completely automate the work of human proofreading.
Textshine relieves proofreaders of 99% of time-consuming routine tasks, allowing them to focus on more demanding aspects of text correction. In many cases, especially with less complex texts or limited budgets, Textshine can significantly reduce or even completely eliminate the need for additional human correction.
The combination of Textshine and human proofreading in the sense of a four-eyes principle enables efficient, cost-effective and particularly thorough quality assurance, especially for demanding texts in the professional publication sector.
Does Textshine replace editing?
No, Textshine does not replace editing. Textshine is a powerful tool for automated, surface-level correction of texts, while editing represents comprehensive, in-depth revision by an experienced professional.
Good editing does much more:
- Content correction
- Stylistic revision
- Structural optimizations
- Checking logic and coherence
- Adapting tonality to target audience and text type
- Fact-checking and source verification
- Advice and support for authors while writing
- and much more
Textshine is intended as support for authors and editors. It removes the “simple” errors and thus creates more space and time for the more demanding aspects of text work. Thanks to Textshine, an editor can focus more on improving the content and style of the text instead of spending time correcting typos or punctuation.
The combination of automated pre-correction by Textshine and subsequent human editing combines machine efficiency with the indispensable human expertise and creativity that are essential for high-quality texts.
đź‘€ How does Textshine differ from ChatGPT?
Our customers generally appreciate the following advantages of Textshine over ChatGPT:
- Textshine is optimized for German and follows DUDEN recommendations.
- Textshine was specifically developed for proofreading and doesn’t rewrite your texts.
- Textshine records all changes (which can then be rejected if in doubt).
- Textshine retains your formatting.
- Textshine processes texts of unlimited length.
- Textshine supports Word files and PDFs (beta feature).
- Textshine offers integrations into professional editorial systems upon request.
- Textshine doesn’t train on your data.
- Textshine doesn’t store your texts.
- You receive your own deployments within the EU upon request.
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👉 Do you have any further questions? Simply send an email to me or my colleague Anna Bozecski, we are always happy to help.